facility:ben-gurion international airport

Felicia Langer. Remembering Israel’s human rights law trailblazer, a Holocaust survivor who called to boycott Israeli products

A communist labeled ’the terrorists’ attorney,’ Felicia Langer called her clients ‘resistance fighters.’ In 1990 she gave up and left for Germany, where she died over the summer

Ofer Aderet SendSend me email alerts
Nov 06, 2018

▻https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-remembering-israel-s-human-rights-law-trailblazer-1.6632132

After the Six-Day War, attorney Felicia Langer opened an office near the Old City in Jerusalem and began representing Arabs. Langer was a strange type in the local topography: a Jewish Holocaust survivor with a Polish accent who adhered to European manners and believed in the ideology of communism.
“Her engagement with Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip was perhaps the strangest thing in the Middle East,” wrote attorney Michael Sfard. Her acquaintances saw in her a pathfinder in legal battles that advanced the human rights of Palestinians. Her enemies saw in her a traitor and accessory of terrorists.
>> Holocaust survivor and Palestinians’ rights lawyer Felicia Langer dies in exile at 87
She was born in the city of Tarnov, Poland in 1930 as Felicia Amalia White. In World War II she fled with her family to the Soviet Union, where her father died. After the war, she returned to the land of her birth and married Holocaust survivor Moshe Langer. In 1950 they immigrated to Israel – “not because of Zionist ideology,” according to her, but to live near her mother.
Archival documents attest to the tense relationships between her and the Israeli establishment. In 1968 an intelligence officer in the military government in Hebron testified before the Legal Attaché of the West Bank that she “held extreme left-wing opinions.” In 1975, the Foreign Ministry reported that the Shin Bet security service viewed her legal activities as being guided by political motivations to harm “the state and the image of the state.” She faced threats to her life throughout her career. Occasionally, she felt compelled to hire a bodyguard.
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Langer fought the expulsion of Palestinian leaders, housing demolitions of terror suspects, administrative detentions (imprisonment without charges), and torture. “She never hesitated to accuse the establishment of crimes and to represent her clients as victims of an evil regime,” wrote Sfard.

When they called her “the defense attorney of terrorists,” she replied that her clients were not terrorists, but “resistance fighters.” “A people under occupation has the right to wage violent struggle,” she said. Among her famous clients was the mayor of Nablus, Bassam Shakaa, one of the leaders of resistance to the occupation, whose expulsion Langer succeeded in preventing. Other clients included the parents of the attackers of Bus 300, who sought to sue the state for killing their sons, and a young Dutch woman who was detained at Ben-Gurion International Airport after she gathered intelligence for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Langer maintained that she was just a “small cog.”
In 1990, she immigrated to Germany, after handling what she estimated to have been 3,000 cases. “I could no longer help the Palestinian victims in the framework of the existing legal system and its flouting of international law, which is supposed to protect the people that I defended,” she said in an interview with Eran Torbiner. “It is forbidden to be silent; silence also can kill,” she said, in explaining her call for the boycott of Israeli goods. As a German citizen, she called on Germany to fight the occupation.
Langer lived in Tübingen, teaching and writing books. Critics were angered by her comparison of Israel to the Nazis, and accused her of hypocrisy for ignoring the crimes of communist regimes. When she was asked once to describe her “love of homeland,” she answered: “Hatred of occupation.” In June, Langer died of cancer at age 87.

Ofer Aderet
Haaretz Correspondent

Israel’s Supreme Court grants Lara Alqasem’s appeal; she will be allowed to enter the country
Haaretz.com | Noa Landau and Jonathan Lis Oct 19, 2018 5:18 AM
▻https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israel-s-supreme-court-accepts-lara-alqasem-s-appeal-she-will-be-a

https://www.haaretz.com/polopoly_fs/1.6573218.1539886990!/image/3123733965.jpg_gen/derivatives/headline_1200x630/3123733965.jpg

U.S. student Lara Alqasem will be allowed to enter Israel after the Supreme Court accepted on Thursday her appeal against the decision to prevent her entry. Alqasem, whom the state claimed was a BDS activist, was held over two weeks in a detainment center at Ben-Gurion International Airport despite receiving a student visa from an Israeli consulate prior to her arrival.

Alqasem, 22, was detained at Ben-Gurion Airport upon her arrival on October 2 after she was flagged as a BDS activist. Alqasem, who has a student visa and is enrolled in a master’s program in human rights at the Hebrew University, has been detained ever since.

“I’m relieved at the court’s decision and incredibly grateful for the work of my amazing and tireless lawyers Yotam Ben Hillel and Leora Bechor as well as the support of my family and friends. I will be happy to say more when I’ve had a chance to rest and process,” Alqasem told Haaretz following her release.

“Since the appellant’s actions do not raise satisfactory cause to bar her to entry to Israel, the inevitable impression is that invalidating the visa given to her was due to the political opinions she holds,” read the verdict. “If this is truly the case, then we are talking about an extreme and dangerous step, which could lead to the crumbling of the pillars upon which democracy in Israel stands,” the verdict continued.

“The Law of Entry to Israel is intended to protect the state’s sovereignty, and the public’s safety and security. It does not have a component of penalty, or revenge for previous bad behavior,” Justice Neal Hendel said.

“Despite the obstacles in her way the appellant insists on her right to study at the Hebrew University. This conduct is not in keeping, in an understatement, with the thesis that the she’s an undercover boycott activist,” he continued.

“The Interior Ministry has openly admitted that it does not have any evidence of the appellant’s engaging in boycott activity since April 2017, except for mysterious ’indications’ whose essence hasn’t been clarified and regarding which no evidence has been submitted,” Neal noted.

“The material submitted regarding the appellant’s activity in the SJP organization shows that even at that stage the boycott activity was minor and limited in character,” Neal added. “There’s no doubt the SJP cell indeed supported boycotting Israel – and this position must be roundly condemned. It is also presumable that the appellant, who played a role in the cell and for three years was one of its few members, was partner to this unworthy activity. However, it is impossible to ignore the cell’s sporadic and relatively minor character. In itself, it certainly was not one of the prominent boycott organizations and it is doubtful whether the appellant could be seen as filling the criteria [required in the law?] even when she had a position in it.”

Neal continued, saying that “alongside the random indications of the appellant’s involvement in BDS activity during her studies, it is impossible to ignore the testimonies of her lecturers about her complex approach, the curiosity she displayed toward Israel and Judaism and her readiness to conduct an open, respectful dialogue – which is in stark contrast to the boycott idea.”

“The struggle against the BDS movement and others like it is a worthy cause. The state is permitted, not to say obliged, to protect itself from discrimination and the violent silencing of the political discourse. It may take steps against the boycott organizations and their activists. In this case, preventing the appellant’s entry does not advance the law’s purpose and clearly deviates from the bounds of reasonability,” Neal concluded.

Justice Anat Baron said that “there was no place to deny the appellant the entry visa she had been granted, because clearly she doesn’t now and hasn’t for a long time engaged in boycotting Israel, not to mention engaging in ’active, continuing and substantial’ work in this matter. The decision to deny the appellant’s entry visa is unreasonable to the extent that it requires intervention.”

#Lara_Alqasem #BDS #Douane #Frontière #Aéroport #expulsions_frontières (d’israel)

Official documents prove: Israel bans young Americans based on Canary Mission website - Israel News - Haaretz.com

Some Americans detained upon arrival in Israel reported being questioned about their political activity based on ’profiles’ on the controversial website Canary Mission. Documents obtained by Haaretz now clearly show that is indeed a source of information for decisions to bar entry

Noa Landau SendSend me email alerts
Oct 04, 2018

▻https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-official-documents-prove-israel-bans-young-americans-based-on-cana

The Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy Ministry is using simple Google searches, mainly the controversial American right-wing website Canary Mission, to bar political activists from entering Israel, according to documents obtained by Haaretz.
>>Israeli court rejects American visa-holding student’s appeal; to be deported for backing BDS
The internal documents, some of which were submitted to the appeals tribunal in the appeal against the deportation of American student Lara Alqasem, show that officials briefly interviewed Alqasem, 22, at Ben-Gurion International Airport on her arrival Tuesday night, then passed her name on for “continued handling” by the ministry because of “suspicion of boycott activity.” Israel recently passed a law banning the entry of foreign nationals who engage in such activity.

>> Are you next? Know your rights if detained at Israel’s border

Links to Canary Mission and Facebook posts are seen on an official Ministry of Strategic Affairs document.
The ministry then sent the officials at the airport an official report classified “sensitive” about Alqasem’s supposed political activities, which included information from five links – four from Facebook and one, the main source, from the Canary Mission site, which follows pro-Palestinian activists on U.S. campuses.
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A decision on Alqasem’s appeal against her deportation was expected Thursday afternoon.
Canary Mission, now the subject of major controversy in the American Jewish community, has been collecting information since 2015 about BDS activists at universities, and sends the information to potential employers. Pro-Israel students have also criticized their activities.

Lara Alqasem.
This week, the American Jewish news site The Forward reported that at least $100,000 of Canary Mission’s budget had been contributed through the San Francisco Jewish Federation and the Helen Diller Family Foundation, which donates to Jewish education. The donation was handed to a group registered in Beit Shemesh called Megamot Shalom, specifically stating that it was for Canary Mission. A few hours after the report was published, the federation announced that it would no longer fund the group.
Over the past few months some of the Americans who have been detained for questioning upon arrival in Israel have reported that they were questioned about their political activity based on “profiles” about them published on Canary Mission. The documents obtained by Haaretz now show clearly that the site is indeed the No. 1 source of information for the decision to bar entry to Alqasem.
According to the links that were the basis for the decision to suspend the student visa that Alqasem had been granted by the Israeli Consulate in Miami, she was president of the Florida chapter of a group called Students for Justice in Palestine, information quoted directly from the Canary Mission. The national arm of that organization, National Students for Justice in Palestine, is indeed on the list of 20 groups that the Strategic Affairs Ministry compiled as criteria to invoke the anti-boycott law. However, Alqasem was not a member at the national level, but rather a local activist. She told the appeals tribunal that the local chapter had only a few members.

Canary Mission’s profile of Lara Alqasem.
The ministry also cited as a reason for barring Alqasem’s entry to Israel a Facebook post showing that “In April 2016 [her] chapter conducted an ongoing campaign calling for the boycott of Sabra hummus, the American version of Hummus Tzabar, because Strauss, which owns Tzabar, funds the Golani Brigade.” Alqasem told the tribunal that she had not taken an active part in this campaign. Another link was about a writers’ petition calling on a cultural center to refuse sponsorship by Israel for its activities. Yet another post, by the local Students for Justice in Palestine, praised the fact that an international security company had stopped operations in Israel. None of these links quoted Alqasem.
She told the tribunal that she is not currently a member of any pro-boycott group and would not come to study for her M.A. in Israel if she were.
The Strategic Affairs Ministry report on Alqasem is so meager that its writers mentioned it themselves: “It should be noted that in this case we rely on a relatively small number of sources found on the Internet.” Over the past few months Haaretz has been following up reports of this nature that have been the basis for denying entry to activists, and found that in many other cases the material consisted of superficial Google searches and that the ministry, by admission of its own senior officials, does not collect information from non-public sources.
skip - Facebook post calling for the boycott of Sabra hummus

The ministry’s criteria for invoking the anti-boycott law state clearly that in order to bar entry to political activists, they must “hold senior or significant positions in the organizations,” including “official senior roles in prominent groups (such as board members).”
But the report on Alqasem does not indicate that she met the criterion of “senior” official in the national movement, nor was this the case for other young people questioned recently at the airport. In some cases it was the Shin Bet security service that questioned people due to past participation in activities such as demonstrations in the territories, and not BDS activities.
“Key activists,” according to the ministry’s criteria, also means people who “consistently take part in promoting BDS in the framework of prominent delegitimization groups or independently, and not, for example, an activist who comes as part of a delegation.” In Alqasem’s case, however, her visa was issued after she was accepted for study at Hebrew University.

BDS success stories - Opinion - Israel News | Haaretz.com
►https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-bds-success-stories-1.6455621

More than the achievements of the economic, academic and cultural boycott, BDS has succeeded in undermining the greatest asset of Israeli public diplomacy: Israel’s liberal and democratic image in the world.

Gideon Levy SendSend me email alerts
Sep 05, 2018

Gilad Erdan is a great success story of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, as is the Strategic Affairs Ministry that he heads. So is the anti-boycott law. Every human rights activist who is expelled from Israel or questioned at Ben-Gurion International Airport is a BDS success story. The European Broadcasting Union’s letter is another success of the global movement to boycott Israel.
More than Lana Del Rey canceling her visit, more than SodaStream moving its factory from the West Bank to the Negev and more than the achievements of the economic, academic and cultural boycott, BDS has succeeded in a different area, effortlessly and perhaps unintentionally. It has undermined the greatest asset of Israeli public diplomacy: Israel’s liberal and democratic image in the world. It was the European Broadcasting Union, of all things, a nonpolitical organization, very far from BDS, that best described the extent of the damage to Israel: The organization compared Israel to Ukraine and Azerbaijan in the conditions it set for these countries to host the Eurovision Song Contest.
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Ukraine and Azerbaijan, which no one seriously considers to be democracies, in the same breath as Israel. This is how the Eurovision organizers see Israel.
The song contest was held in Jerusalem twice before, and no one thought to set conditions to guarantee the civil liberties of participants. Now it is necessary to guarantee, in advance and in writing, what is self-evident in a democracy: freedom of entry and freedom of movement to everyone who comes for the competition.
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In Israel, as in Ukraine and Azerbaijan, this is no longer self-evident. In the 13 years since it was founded, the BDS movement couldn’t have dreamed of a greater triumph.
The main credit, of course, goes to the Israeli government, which in declaring war on BDS and made a great contributions to the movement. With a commander like Erdan, who is outraged over the interference with the “laws of a democratic state” and doesn’t understand how grotesque his words are, and with a ministry that is nothing but an international thought police, the government is telling the world: Israel isn’t what you thought. Did you think for years that Israel was a liberal democracy? Did you close your eyes to the goings-on in its backyard? Did you think the occupation was separate from the state, that it could be maintained in a democracy, that it was surely temporary and would be over momentarily? That at least sovereign Israel is part of the West? Well, you were wrong.

Eurovision’s demands should serve as wake-up call for Israel - Haaretz Editorial - Israel News | Haaretz.com

▻https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/eurovision-s-demands-should-serve-as-wake-up-call-for-israel-1.6450815

In a different time, the demands of the European Broadcasting Union, the organizer of the Eurovision Song Contest, would have been received in Israel with a shrug, as self-evident.
To really understand Israel and the Palestinians - subscribe to Haaretz
According to a report by the Israel Television News Corporation, the broadcasting union is asking for an Israeli authority, preferably the prime minister, to promise that Israel will grant entry visas for the event regardless of applicants’ political opinions; that visitors be able to tour the country regardless of their political opinions, religion or sexual orientation; that there be freedom of the press and complete freedom of expression for all participants; that there be no religious restrictions on rehearsals on Saturday; and that Israel’s public broadcasting company, Kan, be given complete independence in editing the broadcasts.

Israel’s Shin Bet detains Peter Beinart at Ben-Gurion airport over political activity
The Jewish-American journalist wrote that he was pulled aside for questioning upon entering Israel ■ Netanyahu says he was told detention was ’administrative mistake’ and ’Israel welcomes all’
Amir Tibon and Noa Landau Aug 13, 2018 8:27 PM
▻https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-beinart-i-was-detained-at-ben-gurion-airport-over-political-activi

https://www.haaretz.com/polopoly_fs/1.6381254.1534175666!/image/1787986305.jpg_gen/derivatives/headline_1200x630/1787986305.jpg

Beinart’s interrogation is the latest in a series of incidents at Israel’s border entry and exit points that involved political questioning of Jewish Americans.

Last month, a Jewish American philanthropist who donated millions to Israeli hospitals and schools was interrogated because security at Ben Gurion found a booklet about Palestine in his suitcase.

Last week, two left-wing Jewish American activists were detained for three hours at the border crossing between Israel and Egypt. One of the activists, Simone Zimmerman, one of the founding members of the Jewish anti-occupation IfNotNow, claimed she was interrogated about her political opinions.

Israel’s security service, the Shin Bet, stated in response to Zimmerman’s allegations that it did not recommend that she be questioned about her political leanings, but simply advised that she and activist Abigail Kirschbaum be questioned.

Beinart mentioned Zimmerman’s detention and questioning in his article. He described Zimmerman’s questioning as part of an overall trend in Israel, noting that “the day before, Netanyahu all but incited violence against the New Israel Fund’s director in Israel.”

The journalist also referenced the Israeli government’s passage of the contentious nation-state law as part of a process in which, in his view, “Israel is getting uglier.”

Yael Patir, the Israel Director at J Street, responded to the Beinart’s detention on Monday, saying that “slippery slope has turned into a dark and dangerous abyss when every citizen who dares criticize the Netanyahu government can find himself interrogated over his opinions.”

“The clerks of the Immigration Authority and Shin Bet interrogators become, against their will, become the obeyers of a regime that uses them as a tool for political persecutions,” she continued.

“If the government of Israel wants some sort of connection to the vast majority of U.S. Jewry, as well as to preserve the Israeli democracy, the political interrogations ought to stop entirely,” Patir concluded.

In May, the Shin Bet held Israeli peace activist Tanya Rubinstein at Ben-Gurion International Airport for half an hour in early May, Rubinstein told Haaretz. She is general coordinator of the Coalition of Women for Peace and was returning from a conference sponsored by the Swedish foreign ministry. Left-wing activist Yehudit Ilani was detained two weeks later on her way back from Europe after visiting a flotilla headed to Gaza in the coming weeks in her capacity as a journalist.

The Shin Bet responded to the report on Beinart’s arrest as well, saying that it operates only according to law and for the state’s security. “Mr. Beinart’s detention was carried out as a result of an error of judgment by the professional official at the scene.”

The Shin Bet also told Haaretz it was “sorry for the unpleasantness Mr. Beinart experienced. The Shin Bet chief has instructed that the case be looked into.”
Amir Tibon

#BenGourion

Hundreds of ultra-Orthodox clash with police in Jerusalem over arrest of draft dodgers
Aaron Rabinowitz Sep 17, 2017 5:57 PM
▻http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.812781
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=k9qH78fzuNo

Hundreds of ultra-Orthodox protesters from the most extreme factions of their community demonstrated on Sunday outside the Israeli army enlistment center on Rashi Street in Jerusalem over the arrest of about 40 ultra-Orthodox men on allegations of desertion. A particular focus of the protest was the arrest of the grandson of the rabbi of the Toldos Avrohom Yitzchok Hasidic sect, who was detained two weeks ago by military police for desertion on landing at Ben-Gurion International Airport. Eight protesters were detained after demonstrators threw stones at the police.

Earlier the protesters gathered at Jerusalem’s Shabbat Square in the heart of the ultra-Orthodox community. The area was closed to traffic and a large contingent of police was deployed in advance of the demonstration.

#inter_israéliens

In first, Israel denies entry to religious official citing support of BDS movement - Israel News -
Haaretz.com | Ilan Lior Dec 06, 2016
read more: ►http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.757208
►http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.757208

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The World Council of Churches is vehemently protesting Israel’s refusal to allow one of its executives to enter the country, charging that officials wrongly accused her of supporting the anti-Israel BDS movement.

It is the first time Israel has deported someone on the grounds that the person supported the Israel boycott, according to Israeli officials.

Israel interrogated and deported Dr. Isabel Apawo Phiri, a Malawi citizen who serves as the council’s associate general secretary, after her arrival Monday at Ben-Gurion International Airport. Interior Minister Arye Dery decided against issuing the visa following consultations with Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, who is also in charge of the Strategic Affairs Ministry - tasked with countering anti-Israel boycotts. Phiri was sent back Monday night to Germany, from where she had originally departed for Israel.

#BDS

Benjamin Netanyahu’s Shady French Connection
►http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.710864

Avec un compte bancaire à Beyrouth dit l’article du Ha’aretz

Nouvelles révélations sur Arnaud Mimran, le « golden boy » en eaux troubles
▻http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/justice/20160303.OBS5792/nouvelles-revelations-sur-arnaud-mimran-le-golden-boy-en-eaux-t

Contacté par « l’Obs » en novembre, #Meyer_Habib n’avait pas souhaité s’exprimer sur le sujet en raison des enquêtes en cours. Proche de l’actuel premier ministre israélien, le député UDI aurait-il présenté le golden boy à Benjamin Netanyahou ? Les deux hommes se connaissent. "D’après plusieurs témoignages concordants, la famille a aidé le parti Likoud et prêté au début des années 2000 son appartement de l’avenue Victor-Hugo (Paris XVIe) à Netanyahou, surnommé « Bibi » en Israël", écrit Mediapart. Et le site d’enquête de publier une photo prise à l’été 2003 de Mimran en « compagnie d’un ’Bibi’ décontracté, chemise ouverte, en bord de mer à Monaco ».

[...]

Enfin, selon Mediapart, Mimran disposerait aussi de contacts dans la police. Dans l’une de ses auditions, ce dernier se serait même targué de connaître un certain « Seb » qu’il présente comme un policier de la DGSI. « J’ai rencontré Arnaud Mimran en 2013. Il se targuait d’avoir de solides protections policières en France. […] Ce sont des choses qu’il évoquait librement devant moi pour faire état de ses protections », confiait quant à lui lors d’une audition de décembre 2014 cité par Médiapart, Cyril Astruc, présenté par « Vanity Fair » comme « l’escroc du siècle » pour son implication supposée dans l’escroquerie à la taxe carbone.

AIPAC Is Destroying Israel, Not Safeguarding It
AIPAC corrupted Israel, teaching it that everything is permissible: The day AIPAC weakens, Israel will grow stronger, forced to stand on its own two feet and be more moral.

Gideon Levy (Washington DC) Mar 19, 2016

▻http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.709751

WASHINGTON – The enemies of Israel will gather here Sunday for their annual conference. Almost 20,000 people will flock to the city’s Walter E. Washington Convention Center. Almost all are Jews, and almost all are not friends of Israel, despite their organization’s name and pretensions.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee may be the organization that has caused the greatest damage to Israel. It corrupted Israel, taught it that everything is permissible to it. It made sure America would cover up and restrain itself over everything. That it would never demand anything in exchange. That Uncle Sam would pay – and keep mum. That the supply of intoxicating drugs would continue. America is the dealer, and AIPAC the pusher.
America’s second most powerful lobby, after the National Rifle Association, is considered pro-Israel. But it is pro an evil, aggressive, occupying, right-wing and nationalist Israel. With friends like these, Israel doesn’t need enemies in the United States. The day AIPAC weakens, Israel will grow stronger. It will be forced to stand on its own two feet and be more moral.
This is an annual parade of toadying to Israel. Only the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces is a more embarrassing and ridiculous organization (there, they also put disabled IDF veterans on the dais to expose their stumps and beg for donations). And in an election year, this embarrassing toadying reaches its peak.
There’s no rational explanation for it. I’ve never met anyone who could provide a comprehensive explanation for the enormous and destructive power AIPAC has accumulated. I’ve never met anyone who could explain America’s blind, automatic policy toward Israel, for which AIPAC is to a large extent responsible, and which contradicts both America’s interests and its declared values.
A belated snowfall is expected to hit the city on Sunday. The cherry trees actually flowered early this year, and this isn’t the only contradiction. At the conference center, presidential candidates will vie over who can be more fawning.
This isn’t a good situation for Israel. Behind this fawning, which more and more Americans are beginning to try to get to the root of, hides suppressed thoughts that will eventually burst forth. Not all of those who fawn over Israel in the Senate and House of Representatives do so willingly. The fear of AIPAC silences them. It also silences the media. This can’t go on forever. It’s also liable to spark anti-Semitic sentiment.
An organization whose achievements include getting Congress to pass a resolution congratulating Israel on the 40th anniversary of the Six-Day War can’t continue to congratulate Israel on the 50th anniversary of that cursed war without more Americans starting to ask why. They’re already beginning to ask where their money is going, and for what purpose. Why to Israel, of all places? Why so much for Israel?
After all, residents of the world’s most financially supported state, which is also the best at whining and playing the victim, live in a country that is ranked 11th in the UN’s World Happiness Report – four places above the country of its funders. Is Israel the neediest country in the world? After all, it’s also a military power, in a region where there are virtually no real armies left, so why should all that weaponry go to Israel, of all countries? And what does it do with it: bomb children in their sleep in Beit Lahia? Kill knife-wielding children of the same age at the Damascus Gate?
Conference participants will wallow in a great deal of self-satisfaction: Look how strong we are. Only Bernie Sanders dared not to come. And if he hadn’t been Jewish, he never would have dared. Qassam rockets, cherry tomatoes and the “gay-friendly” slogan will once again star here to the applause and tears of the masses, together with praise for the Mideast’s only democracy.
Very few will cast doubt on it, even though the cracks on its facade are already gaping and apartheid lies in its backyard. Look at Syria, the Israeli propagandists who will arrive here en masse from Ben-Gurion International Airport will say. And nobody will respond that America doesn’t fund Syria, that nobody says Syria is America’s greatest ally.
Therefore, thank you very much, dear brothers from AIPAC, for bringing us to this point. Without your efforts, we would be in a different and much better place today.

Netanyahu: At UN, I Will Stress Israel’s Desire for Peace With Palestinians - Diplomacy and Defense - Haaretz
▻http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.678032

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said before flying out to New York for the UN General Assembly that he intends to “highlight Israel’s desire for peace with the Palestinians” during his Thursday speech and his meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday. Netanyahu also said he will urge the Palestinians to stop inciting unrest on Temple Mount.

“I will stress that unfortunately, the Palestinians continue to spread blatant lies about our policy on Temple Mount, and I will demand an end to this wild incitement,” he said upon arriving at Ben-Gurion International Airport. “Israel is committed to the status quo, which it maintains. The Palestinian rioters who bring weapons to Temple Mount are the ones who harm the holy place and are the ones violating the status quo.”

Netanyahu said that in his speech, he would discuss Israel’s policy in light of the situation in Syria and the threats on Israel’s northern border. He added that he intends to explain what Israeli citizens feel after the nuclear agreement with Iran, and what Israel expects from the international community in the wake of that agreement.

avec une image ?

https://s.qwant.com/thumbr/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.centpapiers.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fnetanyahu3.jpg

Haaretz investigation: Secret flight operating between Israel and Gulf state
▻http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/1.629457

The airplane parked in a side lot at Ben-Gurion International Airport for the past several months does not attract any particular attention. But the plane, which bears a foreign flag on one side, is one of the more interesting of the hundreds of aircraft that take off and land at the airport every week.

A Haaretz analysis of publicly available online flight data indicates that this civilian plane follows what appears to be a permanent flight path between Ben-Gurion Airport and an airport in a Gulf state.

Israel’s relations with the Gulf states are extremely sensitive, however, and the flights are indirect because Israel does not have official diplomatic relations with the country in question.

The flight data indicate that after taking off from Ben-Gurion, the plane spends a few days in the Gulf state in question and then returns to Israel. There have been several flights between Israel and the Gulf state recently.

It remains unclear who or what is using the route, and whether that entity is Israeli. What is clear is that the Israel-Gulf route is being kept extremely low-profile.

When asked about who uses the plane flying that route, the spokeswoman for the small foreign airline that owns it said that information was confidential.

“Unfortunately, the information you have requested is confidential as it concerns a private client,” she said in a statement. “We have to remain discreet and cannot provide you with any details regarding this operation.”

The airline that owns the mystery plane leases its aircraft, services and flight crews to companies and businesspeople. It also runs flights on special flight paths for airlines including Germany’s Lufthansa and Scandinavian Airlines.

Licensing data for the aircraft indicate that it landed at Ben-Gurion Airport for the first time two days after the airline took ownership of the plane. The aircraft is fitted out with business-class seats, eight of which are placed around two tables at the front of the plane.

Many Israeli businesspeople work quietly in the Gulf, though Israeli business activity there has decreased since the 2010 assassination of senior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai, which has been attributed to the Mossad.

The French journal Intelligence Online reported in January 2012 that Zurich-based AGT International, a safety and security solutions provider whose founder and CEO is Israeli businessman Mati Kochavi, had sold $800 million worth of security equipment to protect oil facilities in the Gulf.

Haaretz investigation: Secret flight operating between Israel and Gulf state: The airplane parked in a side lot at Ben-Gurion International Airport for the past several months does not attract any particular attention. But the plane, which bears a foreign flag on one side, is one of the more interesting of the hundreds of aircraft that take off and land at the airport every week. A Haaretz analysis of publicly available online flight data indicates that this civilian plane follows what appears to be a permanent flight path between Ben-Gurion Airport and an airport in a Gulf state. (Haarez)

Demeaned at Ben-Gurion airport: ’Now you know what Jews endured’
By Amira Hass | Jan. 6, 2014
Haaretz
▻http://www.haaretz.com/news/features/.premium-1.567157

Only half an hour before her flight from Israel, D. was standing almost completely naked while an Eastern European-looking security inspector touched her arms, legs and hips. “She also put her fingers in the inside top rim of my underwear,” the young and – may I add, brilliant – doctoral student wrote to me.

I met D. several years ago on one of her research trips to Israel. She is neither Palestinian nor Jewish. She was born in the Middle East, but grew up in the West and carries a Western passport.

D. arrived at Ben-Gurion International Airport three hours ahead of her scheduled departure time. As on all previous visits, she was told to open her suitcase and two carry-ons for a thorough search.

But then, just 45 minutes before takeoff, D. was told she would have to undergo a body search and would not be allowed to board the plane with her laptop.

D. wrote me in an email: “I protested by saying, ‘I refuse to leave my laptop ... this has all of my archival research on it ... How can I trust that it will be returned to me?’” D. asked the young white woman with blue eyes and long, straight hair, and her supervisor, a young, brown-haired man. “A third, slightly older man (also brown-haired) in a suit came to me and said that if I continued to delay the search, I would miss my flight and would be responsible for that.

“I protested again, saying they were the ones who delayed the search of my suitcase, taking their time, getting distracted with other passengers around them, passing on tasks of checking my cellphone charger, my ceramics, my olive oil and such things to their colleagues, doing a lot of small talk and joking in the process.

"I told him that I arrived the full three hours before my flight and they made me wait for long periods while they were searching the suitcase, so if I missed the flight it would be their responsibility. And the three of them began to argue back and say that no, it would be my responsibility.”

None of three identified themselves and D. did not notice if they wore name tags.

I imagine D. with her black eyes staring at her inspectors and, after a quick consideration of the balance of power, softening her face and following them. In this instance, her sharp mind was no advantage.

While waiting to be frisked in a different area, D. overheard a conversation between a woman who spoke with an Arabic accent and an Israeli man.

“Why are you treating me like this?” the woman was saying. “I am an old woman. I am in a wheelchair. I was born in this country. I have citizenship here. Do you think I have a bomb?”

The last question set the young male officer off and he responded aggressively. “You’re not listening to me! We’re doing you a favour,” he snapped. “This way you don’t have to wait in line in the airport.”

D. was required to take off all her clothes except for her underwear. She was also required to remove the Band-Aid from a finger that had been cut a day earlier.

After the “Eastern European-looking” woman traced her gloved fingers over D.’s body, “she was also very interested in my hair,” D. wrote, “and worked her fingers along my scalp to see if there was anything in my hair.”

As the female officer touched her, D. wrote that the woman said, “‘Sorry for the inconvenience, ma’am.’ I told her not to call it an inconvenience. ‘Do not call it that. This is humiliation.’ She responded, ‘I’m sorry this is how you see it.’ I responded: ‘This is not how I see it. This is what you are doing. You are humiliating people.’

"And then, in all seriousness, she responds, ‘Well, now you know what they did to us in Germany.’ At that stage my back was to her. I had to stop and turn around to face her. I just glared at her and said ‘Really? And what does that make you then?’ With a blank face she responded, ‘I don’t know, ma’am.’”

I responded to D. in an email: “The security check, the wasting of your time, the condescension – I believe it all because I have heard similar testimonies. But such a stupid comment? If anyone but you were to tell me such a thing, I wouldn’t have believed it.”

D. wrote back: “I was totally shocked when I heard the comment, because of how candid and revealing it was. And at this point my body was reacting against me and my tears were already beginning to show and flow, despite my strong tone. I had to turn around and face her to make sure she was not joking. When I realized she was speaking in all seriousness, I asked her what I did.”

The body strip search took 20-25 minutes, according to D.’s estimate. There were still 25 minutes before the plane took off. The rest of the journey to the gate passed quickly, even giving the laptop away to the security people in exchange for some sort of receipt.

Several days after landing in the city where she lives, D. went to the airport to collect her laptop. Friends who know about computers checked the laptop and said they suspected that data was downloaded from it - perhaps for future monitoring as well.

I didn’t request a comment from the Israel Airports Authority. They would only give the standard response: “Everything is conducted according to the instructions of security officials [meaning the Shin Bet security service], according to the law, and we regret the discomfort caused the passenger.”

But that’s not the reason I gave up on asking. Both D. and I fear the vindictiveness of the bureaucratic–security apparatus. Openly reporting what happened behind the scenes at Ben-Gurion airport could cost D. in the future. She could be “denied entry for security reasons.”